Box of Danger

I was reading a discussion on dubbing movies and there seems to be an opinion that dubbing is only okay when its for anime.

I never heard a good dub in my life. Can someone post a clip of an anime dub that is considered great and then the same clip in the original Japanese?

Alright, need some clarification on this. Are you looking for simply what's been translated and delivered in English compared to Japanese, or are you also looking based on the delivery of the lines (read: the actual acting part of voice acting)?

Sorry, I just think saying, "...anime dub that is considered great...," to be a bit broad.

Basically, I'm just wanting to make sure I understand exactly what you're looking for before you rip to shreds.

yeah, a "great dub" should be both accurate and performed well. I feel like good accuracy is less rare than good performance.

When you say you've never heard a good dub in your life, are you talking only about anime? I'm assuming that, but, if that's the case, I can't give ya anything.

If anyone says the dub for Monster is bad, they're lying through their teeth.

Hell, Funi has plenty of good work. But the dubbing for Monster is top-notch. It fits fir such a fantastic show.

Another good one is "Now and Then, Here and There". Which is also an amazing show.

Put up or shut up or lie with the rest!

eureka 7 has a good dub. In fact, most dubs are pretty good, just not the ones where they have to make the material "age appropriate". FLCL and FMA come to mind as dubs that kept to the quality and theme of the source material.

Jap:

Eng:

I agree that more often than not, dubbing fails to be on the same level as the original. But there are good dubs out there. Samurai Champloo comes to mind, having watched both versions plenty of times I must say there is very little difference in quality. Mugen's voice is a little deeper and more threatening in Japanese, but the English voice (done by Steven Blum) fits the character even better in my opinion.

Other dubs that I found good: Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, Hellsing, Trigun... could probably think of others if I tried.

The acting sounds pretty bad in that FLCL video.

Yeah, I love FLCL, and even I don't care much for the dub. Very hit or miss, mostly miss. English actor for Naota is pretty good, and I've also liked Kari Whalgren as Haruko, but for some reason things just don't work out here.

meh, I'll admit that stuff does get lost in translation, but that is one of the weirdest scenes ever made and isn't exactly a fair representation. I had a long period of only liking subbed anime, but that's because it allowed me to believe that all the voice actors are amazing, when the truth is that they could actually sound really corny or not suited to the character. A lot of the weirdness in anime could be excused by the fact that the voice actors are speaking in a language that is weird to me. Reading "Breast Tweaking, Breast Tweaking; Breast FLCL" is less weird than hearing "Fondling around, fooling around Fooly Cooly!" When they're both pretty weird when you think about it.

I want to hear the reasoning on how the dub failed to convey the same energy and message as the original in that scene.

I'm not saying the acting in the original is good, im just saying the English dub is bad acting.

Read the third post in this thread.

Most any voice acting panel you go to at a convention, you'll be told that to be a good voice actor, you have to be a good actor as well. The majority of professional voice actors for anime have some form of acting background, and will encourage you to look into participating in local theater and to take voice lessons if you seriously want to pursue a career in voice acting.

That said, you never see any of them in big budget movies. Sure you have people like Johnny Young Bosch who was in Power Rangers (really the only notable VA who's been in anything big that I've seen that isn't a cartoon), but that's also a children's show; he's also a terrible voice actor.

Why do you think Pixar, Disney, and DreamWorks tend to go with well known actors for most of their voice rolls? Sure you have the name recognition, but the people they go with are also usually pretty good actors, and it shows.

I think if Daniel Day Lewis were to be in a Pixar film, Broel would cream his pants.

As opposed to what? Please tell me the "right acting" for that scene that made the english dub "Bad?" If it's you not liking the style of how the lines are said in this anime, then say that, but if you're saying the emotions, delivery, and translations that do their job of making it natural to say and understand as an American broad-audience show (read: Don't direct-translate japanese-pased puns) are to a point that they failed their job, then please continue.



Connections. That's what any actor will tell you most, if not all the time, why they get gigs. There's just been plenty of flops as there are greats.

And Miyazaki films had plenty of anime-veteran dubbers, so there's no prevention stigma in your resume if you voiced for anime in the past. Jeez man Crispin Freeman, a very heavy-anime dubber and still is, was a major character in Howl's Moving Castle.

The emotions rings false, the delivery is stiff.

I don't know why you just don't choose a clip that going to be a little more telling in its range. It seems like you expect me to give the acting credit, because you posted a clip supposed to be over the top and bad on purpose.

Let's go backwards with Disney's anime releases, and the big names in each of them:

Ponyo:

Cate Blanchett
Matt Damon
Frankie Jonas
Tina Fey
Liam Neeson
Cloris Leachman
Lily Tomlin
Betty White

Howl's Moving Castle:

Jean Simmons
Christian Bale
Lauren Bacall
Billy Crystal
Emily Mortimer
Josh Hutcherson
Blythe Danner

I don't even need to go into half the names involved with Pixar and DreamWorks productions. But what the hell, let's make a huge list:

Actors/tresses who have worked for Pixar, and are also very notable actors:

Tom Hanks
Tim Allen
Don Rickles
Jim Varney
Wallace Shawn
John Ratzenberger
Annie Potts
Kevin Spacey
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Denis Leary
Phyllis Diller
Joe Ranft
David Hyde Pierce
Brad Garrett
Richard Kind
Bonnie Hunt
Jonathan Harris
Madeline Kahn
Roddy McDowall
John Goodman
Billy Crystal
Steve Buscemi
James Coburn
Albert Brooks
Ellen DeGeneres
Willem Dafoe
Geoffrey Rush
Craig T. Nelson
Holly Hunter
Jason Lee
Samuel L. Jackson
Owen Wilson
Paul Newman
Bonnie Hunt
Larry the Cable Guy
Tony Shalhoub
George Carlin
Cheech Marin
Richard Petty
Michael Keaton
Patton Oswalt
Ian Holm
Brian Dennehy
Janeane Garofalo
Peter O'Toole
Fred Willard
Sigourney Weaver
Edward Asner
Christopher Plummer
Whoopi Goldberg

Same list, for DreamWorks Animation:

Woody Allen
Sharon Stone
Gene Hackman
Sylvester Stallone
Jennifer Lopez
Christopher Walken
Anne Bancroft
Dan Aykroyd
Danny Glover
Mike Myers
Eddie Murphy
Cameron Diaz
John Lithgow
Antonio Banderas
Julie Andrews
John Cleese
Will Smith
Jack Black
Robert De Niro
Renée Zellweger
Martin Scorsese
Angelina Jolie
Ben Stiller
Chris Rock
David Schwimmer
Jada Pinkett Smith
Sacha Baron Cohen
Cedric the Entertainer
Andy Richter
Bruce Willis
Garry Shandling
Steve Carell
William Shatner
Wanda Sykes
Nick Nolte
Eugene Levy
Catherine O'Hara
Allison Janney
Thomas Haden Church
Hugh Jackman
Kate Winslet
Justin Timberlake
Jerry Seinfeld
Renée Zellweger
Matthew Broderick
John Goodman
Chris Rock
Kathy Bates
Megan Mullally
Jack Black
Dustin Hoffman
Angelina Jolie
Ian McShane
Jackie Chan
Seth Rogen
Lucy Liu
David Cross
Bernie Mac
Alec Baldwin
Reese Witherspoon
Seth Rogen
Hugh Laurie
Will Arnett
Rainn Wilson
Kiefer Sutherland
Stephen Colbert
Paul Rudd
Jay Baruchel
Gerard Butler
Christopher Mintz-Plasse
Jonah Hill
America Ferrera
Craig Ferguson


Yeah, if you think for a second it was merely the connections these actors have that landed them their roles, you're dumb. They were sought out directly by the studio for their ability to act, and thus voice act.

Tom Hanks didn't land one of their most iconic roles simply because he has good connections, he landed it by being a damn good actor.

I don't care about "big names". The guy that played Linguini in Ratatouille was a nobody and was awsome.

I know, I'm just making a point that good actors typically also mean good voice actors. Mostly it was just to prove a point that the actors that tend to be hired for big productions such as the ones from Disney, Pixar, and DreamWorks are already very notable and highly regarded, so they don't land roles because they're connected, they land roles because the studios think, "Hey, so and so would be good for this part, let's see if they want it."

The actor for Linquini is a production artist for Pixar, so in his case it sort of was a connection: he worked for the company.

Although good stage/film actors suck at "action noises"

Dreamworks seems to go out of its way to have a "name" regards if it means the best performance. While Pixar tries to go with less A-list stars that will give the best performance. Patton Oswalt would not have got the role if the movie was made by Dreamworks.

I certainly don't think it's solely connections. I'm saying unless you are such exceptions such as Tom Hanks (because he and all the people you listed are an incredibly small minority), getting your foot's shadow in the door is more about connections than necessarily talent.


In the case of animation originals, Pre-lay voice acting, especially when they take the time to immerse you in the role with a good director and pretty damn good money as motivation, gives a hell lot more leeway to sound good than most dub processes. Amateurs can sound superior to the most talented professionals if you put one in pre-lay and one in post-lay.



And finding specific clips is goddamn hard for comparing the exact scene:

Eng:

Jap:

I don't think that's the official subs, though. FUNi prevents embedding on their episodes so accurate subs are a bust.

E: Yeah, definitely not the official subs.

Look at the voice acting in games like Uncharted or Mass Effect 2 (excluding male Shepard), those are huge names but those are pretty darn good.

In those two clips, i think the original Japanese is pretty darn bad acting, but i think English dub is even worse.